Word Origin & History

1660s, "willful destroyer of what is beautiful or venerable," from Vandals, name of the Germanic tribe that sacked Rome in 455 under Genseric, from Latin Vandalus (plural Vandali), from the tribe's name for itself (Old English Wendlas), from Proto-Germanic *Wandal- "Wanderer."

Example Sentences forvandal

The vandal had known his way about in a laboratory, that was obvious.

Luce paused in her task of placing the knives and forks to look at the vandal.

Some vandal has broken nearly every pane of glass in the house!

I looked upon my father as a Byzantian sage might have looked on a Vandal.

“We shall but exchange a Goth for a Vandal,” his wife replied.

It roused the vandal in him—he longed to break her, mar her.

But if there had ever been one, it had decayed or been removed by some vandal as a relic.

In the manner of a vandal, he has slain for profit or sport.

The most vandal of the vandals are not always those we would suspect.

"I should not think it a vandal's act—if we were married," she answered, and their eyes met.